Two out of every five Germans want Chancellor Angela Merkel to step down in light of an ongoing dispute within her government over how to handle asylum seekers at the country's borders, a poll released Friday showed.
Forty-three per cent of respondents to a YouGov survey said that Merkel should make way for a successor, while roughly the same percentage (42 per cent) said she should remain in office. Fifteen per cent declined to respond to the question.
Merkel has accepted an end-of-June deadline from intransigent Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who says that unless she finds a way to stem the influx of migrants to Germany with EU partners he will close national borders to certain groups of asylum seekers.
Merkel argues that unilateral decisions could create bottlenecks, thereby inviting tensions with Germany's neighbours and undermining EU solidarity.
The stand-off has led to speculation that Merkel's conservative bloc - composed of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian counterpart, the Christian Social Union (CSU) - could split in two, thereby robbing her of her parliamentary majority and perhaps even forcing snap elections.
The YouGov poll showed that nearly a third of Germans surveyed (32 per cent) believe that the dispute could unseat Merkel's government, which is made up of the CDU, the CSU and the centre-left Social Democrats.
Some 31 per cent of respondents said they believed the coalition would last until the next election in 2021.
The YouGov market research firm surveyed a representative sample of 2,053 people during a three-day period ending on June 21.
